Holy Guacamole!

Apparently, the Bush "administration" thinks this is an idea which time has come: they intend to put up a wall at the border with Mexico to prevent the influx of all of your gardeners, nannies, fruitpickers, people who work in horrid slaughterhouses, busboys, delivery boys, cooks, valet parking attendants, hotel staff, and every kind of underpaid, backbreaking occupations other citizens of this country can't be bothered with.
Mexicans in Mexico are outraged. A wall! The chutzpah! The discrimination! I agree, at the very least, it shows extreme ungratitude.
However, before they plotz, Mexicans should ask themselves a simple question: Why are our compatriots willing to risk life and limb, willing to die of heatstroke in the desert (or asphyxia inside a sealed truck), to pay thousands of dollars to unscrupulous coyotes, to leave their families behind and risk never being able to see them again, in order to be treated like mierda in the US?
The answer is equally simple: because they are treated less like shit here than in their own country. Here people may ignore them or resent them or both, but even working illegally, with no benefits or protection from abuse, they still make more money than they would ever make in their homeland. And that money makes all the difference: it means a slow ascent into something resembling dignity, which Mexico refuses to give them in the form of better salaries, a better education or the possibility of upward mobility. Mexican immigrants provide Mexico with the second source of income after oil. They send back billions of dollars a year to their towns and families and many of them take it upon themselves to improve hospitals and schools, pave their own roads, and do what their government won't. Mexico is a tremendously wealthy country which thrives on the backs of millions of exploited people. So before everybody starts screaming bloody murder at the evil gringos, maybe they should think about improving the standard of living in Mexico and giving Mexicans better opportunities. Then perhaps the immigration will finally taper off.